Episode VIII director Rian Johnson highlights the microfiber sham guys in his Tumblr post marking the halfway point of filming.
Rock on, microfiber sham guys.
A statistical look at The Force Awakens’ fan fiction
Remember when a respected publication wrote about The Force Awakens fanfic? Well, here’s an intriguing follow-up of sorts: Tumblr user DestinationToast on the Archive of Our Own stats for the fandom.
Archive of Our Own (aka AO3) is arguably the most important fan fiction archive for general fandom. This isn’t a complete picture of Star Wars fan fiction, as Star Wars has always been a bit of an outlier to overall fandom trends, but The Force Awakens is the first major Star Wars film to come out since AO3 launched in 2008. Toast does look briefly at the numbers for old standby Fanfiction.Net (FFN,) plus relative newcomers Tumblr and Wattpad.
Another major outlet for Star Wars fic is TheForce.Net’s Jedi Council boards, but no doubt the message board format makes these sort of things much harder to track. I do hope that authors on the JC have gotten better about double-posting their works to FFN or AO3… A lot of fics were all but lost when TFN migrated their boards to a new system several years back, causing posts of length (aka mostly fanfic) to be truncated beyond readability.
Her Universe’s The Force Awakens collection is live
Daisy Ridley shares some staff work on Instagram
Daisy Ridley shows her wushu progress in a video made with the help of stuntman Liang Yang (aka TR-8R, aka FN-2199.) Head over to her Instagram to check it out.
Today in The Force Awakens: Making of book canceled?
Although it was never officially announced, it appears that The Making of Star Wars: The Force Awakens book from Mark Cotta Vaz and J.W. Rinzler has been canceled. A listing for the book appeared before the movie – usually a reliable indicator – and it was pushed back to October before the film’s release. However, it now it no longer appears on the publisher’s site, and Florian at Jedi Bibliothek found a listing on BookManager that says it’s been canceled..
All-out cancellations are rare, but I don’t expect we’ll get any word on the reasoning anytime soon. (Again, it was never actually announced.) My only guess is that it may have something to do with the lawsuit over Harrison Ford’s on-set injury. Note the incident isn’t mentioned in the official behind-the-scenes documentary on The Force Awakens Blu-ray – and may be off-limits until the legal issues have been worked out. Everyone loves the original trilogy Making of books, but here’s hoping we won’t have to wait 30 years for this one.
→ Speaking of the accident… Something we overlooked during the big Rey parentage debacle was J.J. Abrams revealing exactly how Ford’s injury actually helped the film.
→ A great new behind the scenes video from Discover Ireland.
→ Casting director Nina Gold talks about finding Daisy Ridley and John Boyega (plus some Game of Thrones folks) in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
→ Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and actor Oscar Isaac are among of Time’s 100 most influential people.
→ Custom BB-8s created by Star Wars stars and luminaries, being auctioned for charity.
Rumor: Royals to have Episode VIII cameos?
The Daily Mail is reporting that Princes William and Harry filmed cameos during their Episode VIII set visit last week, alongside Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and… Benicio del Toro?
Given this is the Mail, a publication not exactly known for being on the up and up, and that there was no sign of del Toro at the official set visit… Well. We’ll see. The Mail also uses a character name for del Toro that I believe originates from the recent Reddit posts.
Yes, those Episode VIII Reddit ‘spoilers’ are bullshit
There have been two so-called leaks come out at Reddit in the week or so, but neither of them are really worth putting any stock in. The first, from last week, is quite frankly so ridiculous that I’m sure sure why anyone is believing it in the first place. (Well, it’s the internet.) A few things in it ring possible to me (I’ve had similar speculative thoughts regarding the Benicio Del Toro character, for instance) but that means nothing.
The second has since been deleted, but Da7e over at Latino Review has reproduced part of it, and in any case this one has been flat-out denied several times by Pablo Hidalgo. Though note, he’s getting out of the debunking business, which is probably a good call.
But as we well know, however, it pays to be very, very cynical about ‘leaks’ this early in the process. Don’t believe everything you read! Particularly on Reddit.
Video: Oscar Isaac, BB-8 for Force for Change
Oscar Isaac and BB-8 have a Force for Change update for us. This week, there’s a chance to win a prize pack with a Sphero BB-8 signed by J.J. Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy.
Today in Episode VIII: Oscar Isaac speaks, possible costume descriptions
Oscar Isaac spoke briefly to the Los Angeles Times about Episode VIII, comparing the experience to “making an independent film,” and saying that “Rian [Johnson] is definitely going to places and investigating things that haven’t really been done in the ‘Star Wars’ universe.”
In spoiler corner, Making Star Wars has descriptions of Luke Skywalker and Rey’s costumes, while The Movie Bit has pictures of the setup-in-progress at Ceann Sibéal. UPDATE: Artist Natalia Trykowska has drawn the outfits based on MSW’s description.
No, we still don’t have any firm denials (or confirmations) on Rey’s parentage
There was a brief panic Friday evening after J.J. Abrams, speaking at at the Tribeca Film Festival, said “Rey’s parents are not in Episode VII. So I can’t possibly say in this moment who they are. But I will say it is something that Rey thinks about, too.”
Ric Olie says: Neither of Rey’s parents being in The Force Awakens would scuttle the popular theory that she’s Luke Skywalker’s daughter.
The panic was short-lived, though, because Entertainment Weekly got Abrams to clarify: “What I meant was that she doesn’t discover them in Episode VII. Not that they may not already be in her world.”
The Rey Skywalker theory lives to fight another day. The only things we have that even resemble firm denials are that she’s not a Solo or related to Rogue One’s Jyn Erso. But until something actually shows up in a movie, it’s still really anyone’s game. (Although I certainly wouldn’t put any money on the Erso theory.)
Though seriously folks, it’s not worth sniping over. This is not Star Wars’ first go-around with unanswered questions, and it won’t be the last. We will find out eventually and, yes, some of those answers might (or might not) surprise you. Don’t stake your theory flags too deeply.